Sea of Words

A fragment from a Naruto time travel au

“Infinite Tsukuyomi,” Tobirama says watching him carefully. Madara pauses, blinks and then takes in the way Tobirama stands, open and vulnerable.

“You shouldn’t know that,” he says slowly, feels the chasm between them. He and Hashirama had reconciled at the end, but there was still business left unspoken. He had wanted to resolve it in the Pure Land, but instead, he had woken up here in the middle of battle.

“You shouldn’t either,” Tobirama says, “but, since you do, I trust you won’t make the same mistake again.”

Madara’s eyes drift to Izuna, unhurt and watching them with a confused expression. He senses Hashirama coming towards them, chakra bright and happy.

“I won’t,” he says and Tobirama smiles. It sends a chill down Madara’s spine. Maybe it’s the way it fixes itself onto Tobirama’s face or the pained tilt to the lips. He hadn’t seen Tobirama’s smiles that often, before, but none of them had ever looked like this.

“Good,” Tobirama says. “Zetsu is taken care of, the statue is ashes, so you and brother can have your peace without obstacles.”

Your peace

The words sound wrong, jarring. There is a flicker in Hashirama’s chakra as he steps up to Madara’s side. There is a tension in Tobirama, a bird about to take flight.

“Don’t you mean our peace?”

Tobirama’s smile thins and he shifts. Madara can feel his water-lightning chakra shift too into a familiar pattern.

“I’m one of the obstacles,” he says and Madara jumps at him, grabs his hands before he can bring his fingers together.

“Not working together was what got us into this mess in the first place,” he snaps and tightens his grip around Tobirama’s wrists. Next to him, Hashirama makes a startled sound and Izuna starts to protest.

“I believe me killing your brother was what started it,” Tobirama points out and the anger Madara is expecting, never comes. Izuna is alive, unharmed. Tobirama hadn’t even bothered to fight him, showing up to the battlefield and talking to Madara instead.

Izuna makes a noise of confusion, opens his mouth and Madara holds up a hand. It’s less intimidating with Tobirama’s wrist in it, but his brother falls silent, bristling with confusion.

“You didn’t this time,” he says and Tobirama’s frown deepens. Madara rolls his eyes. He’s starting to realize exactly why Tobirama took on all the work himself. It was a form of self-punishment, though part of it was definitely the fact that he thought Madara incompetent. Madara carefully ignored the part of him that whispered that Tobirama was right, that he had neglected the village before he left and that he couldn’t have been trusted with the important things.

“Of course not,” Tobirama said trying to tug his wrists out of Madara’s grasp. “Izuna shouldn’t have died.”

There was something unspoken attached to that sentence. It raised the hair on the back of his neck and there was a dark shade to Tobirama’s chakra that he did not like.

“Tobi,” Hashirama breaks in, finally having gotten over his shock, “what is going on?”

Tobirama’s eyes shift to him and there is something infinitely sad in his gaze. Madara wants to clutch Izuna, check his pulse and make sure he never ever felt that way.

“The fixing of many mistakes,” Tobirama says and uses Madara’s distraction to get away. Madara growls, reaches for the black fire that always comes easily to him now and stops. He wasn’t like that anymore. He was trying to change.